After having a remarkable IPL 2024, Abhishek Sharma earned his maiden India call-up for the T20Is for the Zimbabwe series that took place in June earlier this year. In the five-match series against Zimbabwe, Abhishek played only four matches scoring 123 runs with the help of one century that came in the second T20I game in Harare. Since then the 24-year-old batter has struggled to remain consistent in his form. In the recently concluded Bangladesh T20I series, he only managed to score 35 runs in three innings and failed to put up a good score in the entire series. Also Read: James Anderson Reveals Why He Registered For IPL 2025 Mega Auction Abhishek will once again open the innings alongside Sanju Samson, just as they did in the Bangladesh series. This change comes as regular openers Shubman Gill and Yashasvi Jaiswal will be heading to Australia for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. Reflecting on the lineup, former cricketer Aakash Chopra believes Abhishek is still looking to establish himself in international cricket. He further said that this South Africa series is going to be a “do-or-die for him. Aakash Chopra on his YouTube channel said: “I think India have two or three big questions. The pressure will be on Abhishek Sharma and a little bit on Sanju Samson, although Sanju scored a hundred in the last match. So I am not going to say that there is any pressure on Sanju.” He further said: “However, since Yashasvi (Jaiswal) will come and Shubman Gill will come at some stage, you feel you should score a lot of runs whenever you get a chance to open. So it's important for him but it's do or die for Abhishek Sharma because after this when the England T20I series will be played at home, you will definitely be dropped if you don't score runs here.”